Hmm it doesnt seem implausible to me at all. W#hat I would want to see is the thing lacking in a fox that prevents it from having that sort of pattern in it's mind. Just like I would want to know that if someone suggested a person was unable to do it.
my impression of what Watson said was that he was describing not an innate difference (and to a geneticist surely that would be nonsense) but a difference that it is unlikely will disappear (which surely is true). And that his critics interpreted his position as being the more extreme version in order (maybe subconsciously) to protect society from the dangerous idea.
People quite often hold contradictory positions simultaneously. there not an incentive for people to be entirely consistent - in fact it is prohibitively expensive in a psychological sense. (eg voters). It would be even easy for the inconsistencies to occur between what you choose to do and what you think you should do.
I imagine two ideal debating agents each with a set of facts and tools with which to make logical connections between those facts. They start to debate over an issue and decide that they agree on whoch is the most plausible answer but also see a large number of flaws in the other side's argument. As ideal debaters they don't 'overlook' those flaws just because they imply the conclusion they want - they highlight them and ask for logical answers. In some cases one side will start to look like a devil's advocate as a result of how debates form and the nature...
Psy-Kosh, when you work it out tell the rest of humanity :)
I do find it intuitive that 'worlds' would interfere with each other so that if one found a photon in an unusual situation then the world/alternate photons would 'resist' that in some way. But I don't know enough of the details to propose a theory that I would not be confident could be shot down.
It would be progress (in as far as one might want to disprove zombie philosophy) to disprove any part of it or to show any part of it was inconsistent with any other part. Its a bit optimistic to think one can in one step disprove it without leaving any conceivable route for the other side to retreat to in as far as they might easily just deny any position that one chooses to leaver against it.
I always took it to be that a zombie could catch itself thinking (as a listener) in the same way a non zombie could, the zombie doesn't lack inner speech in that sense, the whole causal chain remains and doesn't create an issue well at least not for a certain set of definitions and understanding of logic.
which really just reflects my agreement with Frank's "Please let's spend more time discussing dubious non-disprovable hypotheses!"
however I like "Thou shalt provide operational definitions for your terms!"
Richard,
is he burden of proof always upon the person proposing that something is impossible when it looks like it might be possible? You are after all trying to use this item to prove something and it is a scenario constructed carefully by your own side of the argument to be almost impossible to disprove. I would think you carry the burden of showing that it is extremely likely to be ideally conceivable - something I think you are very far from doing because of more or less the sort of argument made in the main article above.
2) That is, it's "miracul...
like pablo I have considered whether arguing for in my case altruism/utilitarianism is always altruistic and thought "well probably" - but I dont analyse it much because in the end I don't know if it would matter - it seems I do what I do because 'that is what I am', more than 'that is what I think is right'. I guess it works the other way too eh.
I think we have a definitional issue with "morality" and "should". I cant see why we seem to think it is so beyond the ability of any brain that can process millions of bits per second.*
The good news however is that if we could get a decent definition there is a lot of literature on studying animals for signs of complex human style behaviors.
"It's the point where you can look at a puppy, and say: "The puppy's parents may push it to the ground when it does something wrong, but that doesn't mean the puppy is doing moral reasoni... (read more)